Callis ladled foggy stew from the cauldron into a bowl. “I’ll sew him a new shirt before he leaves.”
“Uh, Mother, there’s a real-life prince from magical fairy land sleeping on our floor and you’re worrying about his shirt?” Agatha said, perching on a creaky stool. “Forget that the sight of me within a hundred feet of a boy should be cause for a town parade or that you’ve been telling me fairy tales are real from the day I was born. Don’t you want to know who he is—” Agatha’s eyes widened. “Wait. Before he leaves? Tedros is staying in Gavaldon . . . forever.”
Callis put the bowl in front of Agatha. “No one likes toad soup cold.”
Agatha bucked up. “Look, I know it’s crowded with him here. But Tedros and I can get work in the village. Think about it, if we save up enough, maybe we can all move to a bigger house, maybe even something in the cottage lanes.” Agatha grinned. “Imagine, Mother, we could actually have living neighbors—”
Callis fixed her with a cold, brown stare and Agatha stopped talking. She followed her mother’s eyes to the small, slime-crusted window over the sink. Agatha pushed out of her chair, bowl untouched, and grabbed a wet dishtowel from the rack. Pressing against the glass, she scraped at the gray smear of dust, grease, and mildew, until a stream of sunlight pierced through. Agatha backed away in surprise.
Down the snow-coated hill, bright red flags billowed from every lamppost in the square:
“Witch?” Agatha choked, gaping at a hundred reflections of her own face. Beyond the square, the colorful storybook houses, decimated by attacks from the Woods, had been rebuilt as monotonous stone bunkers. A phalanx of guards in long black cloaks and black-iron masks carried spears, patrolling the cottage lanes and forest perimeter. Dread rising, Agatha’s eyes slowly fell on the spot where her and Sophie’s statues once glistened near the crooked clock tower. Now there was only a raised wooden stage, with a giant pyre made of birches, two flaming torches fixed to the scaffolding, and a banner of her and Sophie’s faces hanging between them.
Agatha’s stomach dropped. She’d escaped a public execution at school only to find one at home.
“I warned you, Agatha,” her mother said behind her. “The Elders believed Sophie a witch who brought the attacks from the Woods. They ordered you not to go after her the night they surrendered her to the attackers. The moment you disobeyed them, you became a witch too.”
Agatha turned, her legs jellying. “So they want to burn me?”
“If you’d come back alone, the Elders might have spared you.” Callis was sitting at the table, head in hands. “You could have taken punishment, like I did for letting you escape.”
A chill went up Agatha’s spine. She looked at her mother, but there were no wounds or marks on her hooked-nose face or gangly arms; all her fingers and toes were intact. “What did they do to you?” Agatha asked, terrified.
“Nothing that compares to what they’ll do to you both when they find him.” Callis looked up, eyelids raw. “The Elders always despised us, Agatha. How could you be so stupid to bring someone back from the Woods?”
“The s-s-storybook said ‘The End,’” Agatha stuttered. “You said it yourself—if our book says ‘The End,’ this has to be our happy ending—”
“Happy ending? With him?” Callis blurted, jolting to her feet. “There is a reason the worlds are separate, Agatha. There is a reason the worlds must be separate. He will never be happy here! You are a Reader and he is a—”
Callis stopped and Agatha stared at her. Callis quickly turned to the sink and pumped water into a kettle.
“Mother . . . ,” Agatha said, suddenly feeling cold. “How do you know what a Reader is?”
“Mmm, can’t hear you, dear.”
“A Reader,” Agatha stressed over the strident cranks. “How do you know that word—”
Callis pumped louder. “Must have seen it in a book, I’m sure . . .”
“Book? What book—”
“One of the storybooks, dear.”
Of course, Agatha sighed, trying to relax. Her mother had always seemed to know things about the fairy-tale world—like all parents in Gavaldon who had feverishly bought storybooks from Mr. Deauville’s Storybook Shop, hunting for clues about the children kidnapped by the School Master. One of the books must have mentioned it, Agatha told herself. That’s why she called me a Reader. That’s why she wasn’t surprised by a prince.
But as Agatha glanced up at Callis, back to her, pumping water into the kettle, Agatha noticed that the pot was already full and overflowing into the sink. She watched her mother staring off into space, hands clenched, pumping water faster, faster, as if pumping memories away with it. Slowly Agatha’s heart started to constrict in her chest, until she felt that cold sensation deepening . . . whispering that the reason her mother wasn’t fazed by Tedros’ appearance wasn’t because she’d read storybooks . . . but because she knew what it was like to live through one . . .
“He returns to the Woods as soon as he wakes,” Callis said, releasing the pump.
Agatha wrenched out of her thoughts. “The Woods? Tedros and I barely escaped alive—and you want us to go back?”
“Not you,” said Callis, still turned. “Him.”
Agatha flared in shock. “Only someone who’s never experienced true love could say such a thing.”